a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Draft Workout Odds and Ends, Edition #4

I might be unnecessarily irked by what is probably the norm now, but it rubs me the wrong way when these teenaged prospects refuse to work out for certain teams, against certain players (or are willing to only work out against certain players), take part in combine drills, and try to control where they go.

If I were a GM, it would just raise so many flags when a player has a list of demands and conditions if you want to see him when you’re going to be the one that’s paying him. When Brandon Knight came to town for his solo workout, he was asked about this and said:

Because my main thing right now is just, like I said, I played against some of these guys already. Like Isaiah Thomas, Kemba, I played against them twice. A lot of these guys have been in my practices plenty of times, and the guy I’m trying to work out against is Kyrie Irving. So main thing right now is just listening to what my camp says, and the best thing to do they say is just to work out by myself. I’m a competitor. I don’t mind working out against anybody…I’m just trying to be strategic, listen to what my camp says to do, just being smart about it. (KALL)

Isn’t it a contradiction that he says he doesn’t mind working out against anyone, but at the same time says the [one] guy he’s trying to work out against is Kyrie Irving (who, btw, is the King of Red Flags)?

Like I said earlier though, this seems to be the norm now, and I’m not trying to specifically pick on Brandon Knight. During Randy Rigby’s weekly chat on KFAN, the show host said that he’d asked Kemba Walker where Knight was during the Jimmer/Kemba workout, and Kemba said that he’d talked to Knight, and Knight had wanted to be there but his agent wouldn’t let him.

It’s like those screaming babies you have the complete misfortune of encountering on planes. You I want to slap the babies silly, but it’s really the fault of the parent for not taking the baby to the bathroom or bringing the baby onto the plane in the first place. Along these lines, it’s really the agents that deserve the blame for propelling these kids down the path of Lebron as they leech $$ from said kids every step of the way.

Last note about Knight: I have to say that my impression of him did improve when I read that he had a 4.3 GPA in high school and heard him say that the lockout won’t affect him much because he can go back to school and earn some more credits.

Next up for the Jazz on Sunday (and yes, I am totally just being a parrot here and repeating a list of names that don’t mean anything to me): Paul Carter, Jordan Hamilton, Tobias Harris, Tyler Honeycutt, Marcus Morris, and Chris Singleton.

P.S. While we’re on the topic of the draft (as if there is any other topic to talk about right now), here’s this year’s draft cap:

To me, it’s not unnecessarily irked. If a guy is a primadonna in college or high school, does anyone honestly think it’s going to get better when they get in to the NBA? This is actually one of the major reasons I am anti-Jimmer. After hearing all the hype about him and thinking to myself, “Hey, do we actually have a Utah kid who might be worth a damn in the league?”, I tune into one of the tourney games and watch him piss and moan for not getting a foul call for – I kid you not – SIX FREAKING MINUTES. And I don’t care who you are (it was the major thing I disliked about D-Will as well), I do not want to see that night in and night out when I’m trying to enjoy myself during a game. And if a kid is already repeating the rhetoric of “I’m just doing what someone told me to do,” and I don’t care if it’s someone they hired to advise them or not – that is a huge red flag of A) I don’t have enough of a brain to think for myself, B) I’m not strong enough to stand up for what I believe should I happen to disagree, or C) I am stupid enough that I hired an idiot who is making me look like an idiot as well. To which I’d reply no thanks, no thanks, and no thanks. Great post.